


Not Quite Sisterhood

by Omorka



Category: The Real Ghostbusters
Genre: Animal Transformation, Fairy Tale Elements, Gen, Implied/Referenced Sexual Harassment, Jewish Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-06
Updated: 2015-06-06
Packaged: 2018-04-03 05:34:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4088854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omorka/pseuds/Omorka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Ghostbusters encounter a witch with personal problems on a bust, with predictable consequences.  Good thing Janine's got connections!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Quite Sisterhood

**Author's Note:**

> CW: references to offscreen harassment, some in-period and in-character but slightly sexist language. As usual, references my headcanons that Egon and Janine are both Jewish by heritage if not in practice, and that Ray is a semi-active practitioner of the magical arts.

The sound of Ray's proton stream was the only warning Winston had to duck and shut his own stream off. Fortunately, he was just in time; the errant particle beam swept through the space that Winston's had previously occupied without incident.

"Careful, Ray!" Winston shouted across the cavernous space. "You almost crossed the streams there!"

"Sorry!" Ray yelped, dodging as a light fixture the size of his torso crashed to the concrete floor in front of him. Fragments of glass and red plastic sprayed across his path. "These guys are _fast_!"

Winston couldn't argue. The pair of Class Fives had appeared at the nightclub just before last call, chasing everyone out of the converted warehouse and leaving a pair of male patrons slimed from head to foot. They had then proceeded to thoroughly wreck the place; the bottles had all been cleared from the shelves, not a single barstool or table was still standing, and anything not nailed down had been smashed. Given that the Ghostbusters had responded to the call within thirty minutes, that was some pretty quick work.

One of the goopers, little more than a red ectoplasmic sphere with beady eyes, a gaping maw, and bat wings, dove for Winston from behind the mirror ball. He got his thrower up and powered on just in time to dissuade it, but it veered off before he could contain it. "Two o'clock, Ray!" he called to his partner.

"I'm on it!" The sizzle of Ray's thrower echoed in the open space. 

Winston dodged around a pile of chairs with their cushions torn open and took aim. Ray's stream was keeping the ghost from swooping off again, but he was losing distance. Winston fired, catching the Class Five between the two streams. "I think we got him!" he crowed.

"We need a trap," Ray called back. "Peter, Egon, any chance of an assist?"

The radio at Winston's side crackled back, "That's a negative. Our gooper's got us pinned in the office; Egon thinks we can nail it, but we'll have to slow it down before we can move."

"Ugh, We'll be there as soon as we can," Ray promised. He shot Winston an apologetic look. "Can you hold him yourself for a sec?"

Winston looked up; the Class Five so far hadn't shown much inclination to dive through walls, and if that trend kept up there were really only two directions it could try to dodge. "I'll give it my best shot," he said, maintaining his aim.

"Okay. Three, two, one -" Ray dropped his stream and hit the quick-release catch on the trap at his belt. The ghost flapped and tried to barrel-roll out of Winston's stream, but he managed to keep it centered until Ray's thrower powered back on. Ray kicked the trap into position and stomped on the pedal with more than his usual enthusiasm; the Class Five screeched and flapped, but the inverted pyramid of light slurped it away as the trap snapped shut again.

"One down, one to go," Winston panted. It should have seemed like more of an achievement, but it was hard to feel like he'd accomplished much in the midst of the wreckage.

Ray scooped up the trap and hung it on the other side of his belt. "C'mon," he said, "let's see if we can free up Egon and Peter."

There were two doors marked EMPLOYEES ONLY; the first led to the bar back room, where several kegs of beer had been opened and overturned, leaving a foamy puddle across half the floor. The second door opened onto a narrow hallway, where the second gooper had left a trail of cornflower blue ectoplasm over the entire left-hand wall. Ray was about to kick in the only door on that side when a commotion broke out; several shouts and the crackling sounds of two throwers on high gave way to the hissing of another ghost trap. 

Peter stuck his head out into the hallway, wisps of smoke drifting out after him. "Okay, so it was a better plan than I thought," he said apologetically over his shoulder.

"Naturally," Egon replied as they both emerged from the office; the smell of singed paper wafted into the hallway in their wake. "Ray, I'm still picking up readings, but they're not ectoplasmic," he continued. "Take a look at this and see if you can confirm my suspicions."

Ray craned his neck to look at the PKE meter's blinking screen and frowned. "That's no ghost," he agreed. "I'd guess it's either a very powerful psychic or a wizard with a really good grimoire."

Egon nodded. "If it's the latter," he elaborated, "then I suspect they summoned those two ghosts from the Netherworld. We'll have to approach them with extreme caution."

"Let me talk to him first," Peter interrupted. "I think I can handle it. Where is he?"

Ray pointed back the way they'd come. "If these readings are correct," he said, "then they've holed up in the DJ booth."

They re-entered the main room; overturned furniture and smashed lighting littered the dance floor. Picking their way around it, they approached the dim corner where the DJ's booth rose from the concrete on plywood steps to hold court over the club. Peter waved at his fellow 'busters to hang back as he approached the booth.

"Hey," Peter called, "we know you're there. How about you come out and talk, huh? We're not going to hurt you."

There was a muffled thump from behind the mixing rack. "Why do I suspect that would be a very bad decision?" asked a high and reedy voice.

"Well, you can't just stay there forever," Peter argued. "We caught your two flunkies."

"I can just summon more," replied the unseen magus.

Peter glanced back at Ray; Ray shook his head briefly. "I'm pretty sure you're out of whatever stuff you need to open the gateway," Peter called back, "or you'd've started when we caught the first one, if not before. Seriously, come on out."

The voice groaned, and a short, slender figure climbed slowly to her feet. She looked barely old enough to be in the club legally, maybe twenty-two at the most. Her black sweater-dress was fashionable and flattering without being overly revealing; tortoiseshell bangles rattled on both wrists, and a tasteful silver pentacle gleamed in the hollow of her throat. Her hair, on the other hand, was a wreck, as was her makeup; the remains of her mascara dripped down her face in tangled streams. A slender stick of white wood stuck out from the top of her purse, bumping her wrist as she clutched the short straps of the handbag loosely in one hand.

"Whoa," Peter said, taking a step forward and holding up both hands. "Baby, what happened?"

She laughed hollowly. "I just wanted to come out, dance to a few tunes, have a good time," she said. "Me and my girlfriends. But they ditched me at the door for some frat boys, including the one I liked, even though Patty knew perfectly well I had my eye on Jared." She sniffled and wiped at her nose with the back of her hand. "I was okay, y'know, like, I can have a good time without them, but then this total smashface and his wingman decided I was gonna be their prize for the evening. Wouldn't leave me alone." She shuddered and tugged at the hem of her dress. "I brought this," she continued, drawing the wand from her handbag, "just in case I got mugged or something, but I was just so - so _angry_ at that point, I lost my head. Instead of just hexing them, I accidentally opened up a portal and called up those two spirits to take care of them instead. And then they just went berserk, started wrecking the place, and I couldn't remember how to banish them again."

"Aww, sweetheart," Peter cooed, "that's awful. Here, let's get you out of here." His boots hit the first step up to the booth.

"No!" she shouted with sudden fury. "Stay back!" She leveled the wand at him as her eyes flashed red.

"Hey,Pete," Winston suggested, "maybe let the witch calm down before you try to -"

"It's cool," Peter insisted, climbing up the steps. "Sweetie's not going to hurt anyone, are you, sweetheart?"

"STOP CALLING ME THAT!" she roared, and a flare of green light burst from the tip of the wand, striking Peter square in the chest.

For a moment, Winston thought Peter had disappeared, as Pete's proton pack hit the steps and clattered to the floor; he grabbed his thrower out of habit, but managed to stop himself before he thumbed the main power switch. The witch shrieked, clutching both hands to her jaw as if she'd just seen a ghost, then dropped like a puppet with her strings cut. Her wand skittered across the industrial carpet of the DJ booth and rolled underneath the light board.

"Peter!" Egon darted forward and bent at the waist. "Ray, get her wand. Can you fix this?"

"Fix what?" Winston asked, hastily stowing his thrower as Ray gingerly picked his way up the plywood steps.

"I won't know until she wakes up," Ray wailed. "Winston, why did you have to spook her?" He crawled underneath a nest of untidy cables and fished out the witch's wand.

"I didn't mean to!" Winston protested. "It was force of habit. What happened to Pete?"

"I can't believe this," Peter croaked. Egon stood up and held out his hand; in his palm sat a bullfrog, its wet skin patterned in brown and green stripes.

Winston stared. "You're kidding," he finally forced out.

"I wish," Peter - the frog - grumbled.

\---

Janine rubbed at her temples with outstretched fingers. "Something about that story doesn't add up," she said as she helped Ray settle the swooning witch on the firehouse's overstuffed couch. She picked up a magazine from the coffee table and began fanning their unconscious guest while Ray fiddled with the spare PKE meter.

"I suspect I agree with you," Egon responded, "but could you unpack that, please?"

Janine set down the magazine, perched on the ottoman, and poked through the girl's open handbag. "Yeah, take a look at this," she said, holding up a white tube of mascara. "This stuff is pretty water-resistant, and it's been on her face long enough to dry out. She'd been crying hard, and it was long before you guys got there."

Peter hopped out of Winston's hands an landed with a wet _plop_ on the arm of the sofa. "So what?" he ribbited. "Why does exactly when she ran her mascara matter?"

"It means that it probably happened before she summoned the two Class Twos, not afterwards," Egon explained.

Peter attempted to shrug. "I still don't get what that has to do with me being green and slimy."

"I think," Janine argued, "she was still upset from being hit on. More to the point, I'm wondering whether they tried to do more than hit on her. You tried to use the quote-unquote 'Venkman charm' on her, didn't you, Dr. V?"

Peter glanced off to the side. "Well, yeah."

"She might have taken that as threatening in her heightened emotional state," Egon hypothesized. "Then, when Winston made what anyone would have reasonably assumed to be a hostile gesture -"

"I already said I was sorry," Winston sighed.

"- She fired a spell she was already considering using earlier," Egon finished. "Possibly the hex she mentioned that she wished she'd used instead of summoning the two Class Fives."

Ray nodded. "Yeah, she'd just been talking about it, so she had it in mind already. If she's as powerful as she looks on the PKE meter, and as inexperienced as she looks in real life, then she could have cast it without really meaning to."

"Why don't we just ask her nicely to turn me back?" Peter croaked, hopping over to the easy chair. "I mean, I'm pretty sure if she meant to seriously hurt me, she'd have been flinging a fireball or something."

"Because I don't think she just fainted," Ray answered, holding up the meter. "Near as I can tell, she used up the last of her magical reserves on the frog transmutation. Maintaining it is sapping up her PKE batteries as fast as they're replenishing themselves."

"Why doesn't she just drop the spell?" Winston asked.

Ray frowned. "I'm not sure, but I'd guess she can't. Like I said, she doesn't seem like a very experienced witch to me, and stopping a spell is a skill, the same as casting it is. I think she's stuck maintaining the spell until she can consciously terminate it -"

"- Which she can't do while she's asleep," Janine finished, groaning. "Can we force her to wake up?"

"Let me go check the first aid kit," Winston suggested, heading towards the bathroom.

Egon removed the witch's wand from a pocket of his jumpsuit. "I concur with Ray's judgement on her lack of experience," he said, twirling it between his fingers. "This wand has almost no PKE imprint of its own. That suggests that it is extremely new; wands and staves that have been used for any significant length of time take on strong imprints from their owners."

"Which opens the question of how she knew the gateway spell to begin with," Ray noted. "That's not something any responsible witch or wizard would show to someone who's only an apprentice."

"I strongly suspect she's learning from a grimoire rather than a teacher," Egon agreed. "And that she peeked ahead in the manual before mastering the basics."

Winston arrived with an ammonia capsule. "Stand back, y'all," he warned, and leaned down to snap it under the witch's nose. She flinched slightly, but didn't wake.

"Great," Peter groaned. "We've got a sleeping beauty on our hands. Ray, can you change me back yourself?"

"I don't know," Ray admitted. "I'll give it a try, though." He held out his hand; Egon passed the wand over, and Ray gave it a couple of practice swishes. "Yeah, this one's new," he agreed. "There's almost nothing to it. She might have even made it herself."

Peter hopped from the arm of the chair to the floor. "Just hit me with some of that that smooth counter-magic, Ray."

Ray shrugged and twirled the wand through a figure-eight. " _Figura reverto_!" he exclaimed. A tiny puff of smoke blossomed from the end of the wand, but Peter remained a bullfrog.

"That's it?" Peter whined.

"As long as she's maintaining the spell, I'm afraid so," Egon said. "We'll either have to meet the spell's natural end condition, or dispel it through ritual means, rather than a quick counterspell."

Janine winced. "Does 'natural end condition' for a turned-into-a-frog spell mean what I think it means?"

"Probably," Ray answered, hiding a smile.

Janine held up both hands. "I'm out," she stated flatly.

"Aww, Janine," Peter cajoled. "I'll make it worth your while."

"If there's one thing I'm not," she pointed out sharply, "it's a princess."

Peter looked startled. "Oh, dang, you're right," he exclaimed. "We're in short supply there, aren't we?" He took a leap up onto the coffee table and looked up at Egon. "Are there any royals in town? We could go hang out at the UN building."

Winston looked at the frog making wet prints on the glass of the table and scratched at his jawline. "How literal is a spell like that?" he asked. "I mean, does it have to be a _princess_ princess?" 

Ray and Egon shared a glance with raised eyebrows, then turned slowly to face Janine. "I don't suppose," Egon said carefully, "that you have any, ah, better-off friends from temple?"

"You can't be serious," Janine moaned, pressing her hand to her forehead again. 

Ray grinned apologetically. "It's just a thought."

"I can't believe this," she grumbled into her palm. "Let me make a couple of phone calls."

\---

"You're _kidding_ ," Rachel Goldman said, with enough vehemence that the waiter at the Cafe Dellafava deigned to glance in their direction.

"I wish I were," Janine said, opening the hatbox she'd set on the cafe table. "You wouldn't believe the stuff my bosses get into."

Rachel leaned forward and poked at Peter gently with a long, frosted pink fingernail. " _This_ you call your _boss_?"

"Hey, don't knock it," Peter riposted, hopping away from the probing nail. "Technically, I'm a doctor."

"A Ph.D.," Janine pointed out. "Not an M.D. But still."

Rachel sighed. "Well, all right," she agreed. "I'll give it a try. But I still think it's a fershlugginer idea."

"You got that right," Janine said, holding up Peter with both hands. Peter merely waggled his lack of eyebrows and did his best to pucker up.

Rachel leaned in, closed her eyes, and planted a big wet smacker right on Peter's mouth. With a bright red flash, the frog disappeared and was replaced with an equally moist Ghostbuster sitting on the cafe table.

Janine blinked. "Well, that worked _way_ better than I expected."

"No kidding," Peter said, inspecting his reflection in the cafe window. "I was worried we'd have to fly me out to England or something."

Rachel cautiously looked him up and down. "Well," she said carefully, "like the lady says, you are technically a doctor, and you're famous. Given that we've already had a first kiss, maybe I could interest you in a proper date?"

"Let me change out of these wet clothes first," Peter answered, smiling, "but I think I can deliver on that." His expression darkened slightly. "And I think I might need to refer our witch for some therapy. She's got some issues, and I'm guessing it's not _all_ just her feeling dumped by her friends."

"Yeah, let's make sure she woke up okay, and I wanna make sure those two dips she told you guys about didn't do anything worse than pester her," Janine added. "Sorry to bug out on you, Rachel, but Dr. V's schedule is free at 6:30 this evening - drop by the firehouse then?"

"I wouldn't miss it," Rachel giggled, dimpling.

As they headed back to Janine's little Volkswagen, Peter chuckled, "Well, if you weren't up for trying the kiss yourself, thanks for setting me up."

"No problem," Janine answered. "But take her someplace nice, okay? She's a little stuck-up, but Rachel's a real sweetheart once you get to know her."

"I'll treat her like a queen," Peter promised, and Janine almost believed him.


End file.
